The Lobbyists.

• Author: Gifford, Bill

Lobbying isn't just sleazy work it's tedious too

In the 1920s, Arkansas Senator Thaddeus Caraway launched an inquiry into the then-nascent profession of lobbying. Of the 400 or so lobby groups active in Washington, the Caraway committee concluded that 90 percent were fakes, set up for the primary purpose of bilking clients.

Today's lobbyists have branched out. Some may bilk their own clients, like their unsophisticated fore-bears, but most now concentrate on fleecing taxpayers (the wage-earning sort), duping Congress, and ambushing their competitors' clients. At least, that's one conclusion Jeffrey Birnbaum nudges readers toward in his closely observed study of the influence industry.

Lobbyists have come a long way since the Caraway committee pawed through the Washington phone book to find them. Today, they stoke the publicity machine. You can hardly open The Washington Post's Style section or Washingtonian without tripping over yet another breathless profile of Bob Gray, Frank Mankiewicz, or Jack Valenti, who go through the motions of power-brokering (limos to the Hill, cellular-phoning, etc.) even though they haven't wielded real power for decades, if ever.

Birubaum punctures the new stereotype as well as the old image of the cigar-chomping fat cat doling out cash for votes. For The Lobbyists, he spent the better part of two years shadowing a half-dozen of Washington's top corporate lobbyists as they shepherded their pet causes through the tumultuous 101st Congress. What emerges is a new portrait of the profession as a technocratic, unglamorous, at times humiliating business (even if most of the drinks are free). It's a job more like accounting or real estate than being a movie star.

Birnbaum gets at what corporate America really wants from Congress: not pork spending, but tax breaks. Or at the very least, tax hikes for someone else. But by focusing too intently on how his lobbyists get the job done, Birnbaum lets a bigger story get away, namely, the way they have monopolized the crucial debate over tax and spending priorities. This is like attempting to cover a hurricane while ignoring what it blows down.

The author clearly deserves some sort of medal for journalistic bravery simply for enduring two years with the likes of dreary Smart Eizenstat; capital-gains preacher CharIs Walker and his underling, Mark Bloomfield; Maglev railway fanatic Wayne Thevenot; good-time Bobby Juliano, champion of the three-martini-lunch; and truckers'...